There is an increasing use of autonomous vehicles, such as for surveillance, package delivery, and personal transportation. Autonomous vehicles may be completely autonomous, using one or more locations (e.g., waypoints) to define origins, destinations, or observation targets. Examples of completely autonomous vehicles may include unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or “self-driving” cars. Autonomous vehicles may be partially autonomous, which may use a combination of locations and operator input to perform actions or travel between locations. An example of a partially autonomous vehicle may include remotely operated UAVs or remotely operated aerial drones.
Autonomous vehicles may include one or more payloads (e.g., onboard devices) to perform various actions, such as a still image capture device (e.g., a camera). Control of such payloads requires an auxiliary communication system. Such auxiliary communication systems can be expensive and may affect the navigation performance or flight performance of the vehicle. To avoid the need for an auxiliary communication system, many payload installations wastefully operate in an always-on state, which consumes power and data storage resources at all times. For location-specific or time-specific payloads such as cameras, the always-on state captures images outside of the intended target of interest. It is desirable to provide improved control over autonomous vehicle payloads.